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Do we need an excuse to show you a gallery of the most amazing, mind-bending mechanical spiders ever to emerge from the fevered brains of roboticists?
No, we do not.
Something about multilegged creatures just seems to fire the imagination of robot builders. Their stability, agility and — let’s face it — creepiness are hard to match.
They’re fast, resilient and occasionally cute. They climb walls, leap off buildings and spy on enemies.
The amazing thing is how many people seem to be building multilegged robots lately, from NASA to British defense firms to French performance artists.
Technically, not all of these are spiders. Many stand on six legs, not eight, and some were modeled after cockroaches rather than tarantulas. Details, details.
On to the spider robots.
Above:
La Princesse
Ironically dubbed “La Princesse,” this 50-foot spider bot roamed the streets of Liverpool in 2008. It was an art project that, instead of sending people fleeing in a panic, drew crowds of admirers. La Princesse was constructed by the French performance art firm, La Machine.
Photo: Matthew Andrews
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Phoenix
The best part about Lynxmotion’s Phoenix bot is that you can use a Playstation controller to move it around. It would be ideal for scaring unsuspecting friends, roommates and soulmates.
Photo: Lynxmotion
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Military Micro-Spider Bot
Using spider bots to freak out your dog, sure. But what about spying on insurgents in a hostile territory? BAE Systems, a major British defense company, is building spider robots to do just that.
Photo: BAE Systems
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Dynamic Autonomous Sprawled Hexapod, aka DASH
Designed by Biomimetic Millisystems Laboratory at the University of California, DASH is surprisingly fast — it can move 5 feet per second — brutally resilient and freakishly cockroach-like.
Photo: U.C. Berkeley Robotics and Intelligent Machines Lab
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iSprawl
A mechanical-engineering team at Stanford University based its design for iSprawl on a cockroach. Designer Sangbae Kim used a light aluminum chassis that lets iSprawl move at 7.5 feet per second. It’s equipped with a battery, electronic motor and power-transmission system.
Photo: Mark Cutkosky/Stanford University
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Robot III
Robot III’s design was cockroach-inspired, too — the South American Blaberus discoidalis, to be exact. Its limbs are pneumatically actuated, using cylinders and blocks of three-way pneumatic valves. Robot III is brought to you by the Ritzman Lab at Cleveland’s Case Western Reserve University.
Photo: Case Western Reserve University Center for Biologically Inspired Robotics Research
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Lego Mindstorm Spider
Mark Weller’s spider bot is made with Lego Mindstorms. The six-bar legs make it look like it’s waltzing. Very elegant legwork, Lego spider. Weller is a technician at the McCoy School of Engineering at Midwestern State University in Texas.
Photo: Mark Weller
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MondoSpider
Stun your hybrid-driving friends with MondoSpider, a transporter robot that recently became 100 percent electric, running on lithium–iron phosphate batteries instead of the gasoline engine that formerly powered it. According to one of its makers, it’s silent now, and “can now be used indoors, in art galleries” — assuming you can find an art gallery big enough outside of Black Rock City.
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Robo Hexapod
This harmless-looking spider bot, developed in Germany by Steffen Schütte, uses a Javelin Stamp microcontroller.
Photo: Steffen Schütte
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SpinyBot
SpinyBot’s wall-climbing ability rivals Spiderman’s. It uses micro-claws to adhere to surfaces and climb. SpinyBot was developed in 2004 by Sangbae Kim when he was a Stanford Ph.D. candidate. He’s now an assistant professor at MIT.
Photo: Mark Cutkosky/Stanford University
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Rise
Not to be undone by Stanford, the University of Pennsylvania developed its own wall-and-tree-climbing spider bot, Rise. Imagine finding one of these on a tree next to your house.Photo: Kod*Lab, University of Pennsylvania
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Mars Spider Rover
Mars rovers were cool. You know what would be much cooler, though? Mars spiders! NASA is developing these as a cheap alternative for future planet exploration.
Photo: NASA/JPL
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19th-Century Spider Robot
All of these are impressive. But nothing comes close to the spectacular 19th-century spider robot shown in Wild Wild West.
Screen capture: Wild Wild West
